#yeah I feel like it all makes some amount of sense

[animentality]

I've always harboured a mild dislike for x reader stuff. I never really held it against people because I don't have the time to antagonise them, but it was so upsetting when every time I opened the fandom tag and all I saw were posts and posts and posts of bland x reader stuff that clearly is ooc with no real substance to them at all. So many of the RP blogs seem the same way.

As someone who tries to make analysis posts and art for the same fandom, it is disheartening when I spend hours and hours on an analysis post about a character and it maybe hits 120 notes while an OOC x reader of the same character soars to the thousands. Maybe it's selfish of me to say but I say it anyway.

The fandom is full of youngsters and I never felt comfortable voicing my opinion for the same because it just felt wrong to tell kids to stop existing in communities. But the amount of times I've been put down for shipping characters with each other rather than myself is an honestly surprising number.

Um. I don't really know where I was going with this.

But your post definitely opened my eyes a little bit on even why I dislike x reader so much. It's sinking in a little bit. My hatred for OOC stuff seeps into this, I suppose. So I wanted to say that. Yeah. I agree with you.

Thank you for saying it.

Signed,

A fellow analyser / artist / fanfic writer lmao

— @lunarcloak

I get you, man.

I know self shippers have always existed.

I don't mind them. If that's how you enjoy the media, then fine.

However.

I just don't think that the sudden rise of self shippers over fan analysis and shipping is a good sign.

I think it comes from a lack of media literacy and willingness to actually engage with a piece of fiction. At least shippers and fan analysts actually talk about the world and plot itself.

self shippers imagine themselves dating a character in an au that is completely disconnected from the story, and acting in a way that's not even close to how they are in canon.

which to me is like... you have a creative writing prompt but it's not a story you're actually engaging with. someone showed you a picture of a handsome man and said write a story about how he'd kiss you.

and it's like... ok. there's no crime in just being horny, but... when that's all a fandom is... I don't consider it a fandom, it's just a masturbation fantasy.

I thought the whole point of fiction was to dive into the human experience and try and understand ourselves better. See the perspectives of others. Live vicariously in another person's shoes.

Fan analysis about themes? Perfect. You're thinking. You're feeling. You're articulating. You're growing as a person as you decide what you like or don't like, or try to put together puzzle pieces so that the whole picture makes sense. Shipping? You're imagining scenarios. You're bending canon to fit your interests. You are developing your own ability to write characters, and growing as an artist and a writer.

But self shipping...?

Eh.

You're writing, I guess, but when you reduce yourself to just... idk, some generic girl that Gojo decides is the Bella to his Edward... I mean I'm glad you're happy and all.

But how happy are you

Are you happy at all, or are you frustrated by this aching loneliness deep in your gut that you just don't understand, and it never quite feels whole bc you keep cramming nothing into it.

And it's not the loneliness or the social awkwardness that I'm criticizing here ok, shippers and fan analysts can be just as lonely. I just think that the human relationship to art should be confusion and appreciation.

you should be trying to understand others or yourself.

you can insist well what's so wrong with escapism? why does everything have to be an intellectual exercise?

it doesn't have to be ... but there's a reason people feel so hollow watching marvel movies.

art without substance is consumption. it's a distraction from your own humanity, it is not anything more.

not to you, anyway.

and I don't know.

that's really sad.

I've made so many friends through ships and babbling about canon and gushing about narrative beats.

I feel like I got something out of fandom, if other people force me to see the world in another light. I feel like a story has done its job if it's made me feel something. and it's really done a great job if I feel invested enough to hope two characters smooch.

but self insert?

eh. so you just like the character and think they're hot. that's fine.

not that interesting to talk about either. requires very little analysis on your part.

they just provoke sexual feelings or romantic feelings , which are easiest for you to process, and then you can move on to the next pretty boy you can turn into a Dom.

it irks me, man.

just a tad bit.

[emerald-polaris]

There's something about this scene that I wanted to point out and analyse a little.

It is implied (however not canon) that Hirano is aspec, and although this scene is leaning towards Hirano feeling something towards Kagi, it's most likely not romantic.

(Btw this is PURELY my own interpretation so feel free to differ!)

The way I see things, this scene is heavily leaning towards admiration on Hirano's part, not romantic love. He wants Kagi to achieve his goals and the fact that he himself is the key to that is what's making him feel this admiration and contentment. It's a feeling of wanting to be close to Kagi and to see his hard work up close.

From my own experience as an aroace myself, there was this person I was close with in high school and for quite some time, and I had helped them consistently throughout one of our classes for two years and would push them to complete and keep up with their classwork, homework, assignments, projects, etc. Because of this, they would mostly end up with good grades and positive feedback from our teachers.

That isn't to say that it was because of me that they did well (they were 100% capable of getting by on their own and doing well without me!), but I did what I did as their friend and I do feel as though I definitely did play a role, even just a tiny one, in helping them.

Because of this feeling, I had a strong desire to be close to this person, and I always wanted to be with them whenever we had to study or complete work. My young self at the time mistook this feeling for romantic love, however I never told anyone, eventually figuring out on my own that it wasn't, lmao. In the end, the only thing I felt towards this person was wanting to be close to them as a friend and nothing more.

This is similar for Hirano - he is the reason that Kagi is able to divert his focus to studying when needed, and he is the reason that his grades and rank have gone up (as we know his rank went from 171st to 60th in such a short amount of time thanks to Hirano's help).

And I feel that right now, Hirano is in that "I want to be really close to Kagi because I helped him get to where he is now" phase in order to continue watching Kagi's hard work up close, but he's going to gradually mistake it for romantic love (which is basically what I did).

That isn't to say that Hirano can't eventually develop romantic feelings for Kagi, because he 100% can! Your sexual and romantic orientations can change, but it's just that for me that wasn't the case. It all just depends on your journey and growth in understanding the difference between platonic and romantic love, or just simple admiration or wanting to be close to a person.

The reason why I love Hirano to Kagiura so much is because of this - the fact that their relationship is so similar to the one I had with the friend I mentioned before (albeit they didn't like me romantically at all and we also did not live together lol), and the (not canonised) aspec representation through Hirano is so dear to me.

I'm sorry if none of this made sense. Whenever I blurt out stuff like this it's usually all over the place 😭

But yeah those are my thoughts about this chapter and I really can't wait to see how their relationship will develop from here!

[wryuxim]

this has been in my drafts way too long, and again, i suck at writing, but i’ve really needed to say this. how the hell is millionsummers so normalized in the fandom? well i know why, but it’s honestly crazy to me how 90% of the pretty small amount of legato fans in existence ship him with knives. like do you even understand his character? sure if you haven’t read trimax (like too many people) you literally wouldn’t know anything significant about him since he’s just kinda there in the other iterations. all you’d see is evil guy x bootlicker right hand that have minimal interactions with each other. don’t get me wrong, i could get behind that. like it even. but the issue is that there’s more to it than just that. even if you haven’t gotten to legato’s backstory in the manga, it’s clear from the start that the way that knives treats him crosses the line of average evil toxic yaoi bull. like literally the very first time we see them interact knives casually shatters every bone in legato’s body bro. causing irreparable damage and rendering someone a quadriplegic(?) after they were probably trying to get you a new body for the past 7ish years is so romantic, right!! He also just disregards him as a person and is generally shitty and all that which is kinda mean of him to do ngl. yeah you could say erm actually knives does care about legato though, he’s just too much of a stubborn bitch to show it!1!1!!1!! and i agree with that (to an extent, not getting into it though) but like…that doesn’t excuse the fact that he’s literally abusive. and that wasn’t even considering literally everything about legato himself. he was horrifically abused for as long as he could remember. he doesn’t know what a healthy relationship of any kind is. he chose to serve knives (despite being well aware of how he was) because he never knew a life outside of that. he thinks that’s all he’s good for and knows he won’t be anything more to knives, yet still kills himself trying to prove his worth. knives is someone he is unhealthily dependent on who causes him to become more and more self-destructive. just because knives isn’t the same as his previous abusers doesn’t mean it’s not just another shitty situation he fell into. i do think legato’s feelings towards knives could be some sort of crush, but it’s more of a one-sided obsession than anything. to think that it’s an actually good cute little pairing baffles me. i think what i’ve said so far is enough of an argument, but there’s still my main point left. i held back on this till now because of the crazy amount of people say he wasn’t for whatever reason, but legato was a CHILD when they met. like do y’all SERIOUSLY think he’s an adult here??

i really don’t want to pull up panels from his backstory flashback, but you literally cannot convince me. nightow didn’t need to state it outright for it to be pretty obvious that he was a kid. we see how he draws other characters when they were younger as reference so you can clearly see the differences in proportion. i mean just compare it to how he looks throughout the rest of the manga, especially near the end. just because he doesn’t have a confirmed canon age doesn’t mean that there wasn’t an intent there. y’all are grasping at straws to justify it.

also the same applies to elendira (x knives) because of the super secret third legato flashback:

i won’t count this as proof for legato because tristamp (though a separate canon) kinda muddies it, but woah she’s not an adult. also irrelevant but knives was smiling at him 😞😞 i’d like to think he was nice to them at one point but this isn’t about that. the fact that people probably take this to fuel their millionsummers makes me very very sad.

back on topic though, there’s another side of the copium spectrum. i can’t believe i have to say this, but i’ve no joke seen people say that legato and knives were both teenagers when they met as if that makes any damn sense. the twins are both confirmed over 150 years old. in trimax, the july incident happened ten years by the date before the events of the last few volumes (cited in my last post), and legato doesn’t look all that different in the two flashbacks. and the flashbacks or any other evidence i could pull out my ass don’t even actually matter because knives is old as fuck and legato is obviously a normal human age. again, it’s just straw grasping bro so please give up 😭🙏

and if you don’t give a shit and loooove grooming mentally ill teenagers you pick up off the streets then fuck off?? you’re gross and legato would hate your ass. i probably have more to say but i can’t think of anything rn so that’s it for now. millionsummers is cringe and this fandom is a prison. but like a cartoon one where the bars have large enough gaps between them to walk through.

[oceandiagonale]

Actually, Guzman is his spanish name.

OH YEAH some other folks pointed that out too, makes sense since it's an irl Spanish name (probably why I see it around a lot!) 😳

(normally it's a surname, I've only seen it used as a first name once in a blue moon -- but also in the pokemon world it's pretty clear that naming conventions aren't the same lol)

[arolesbianism]

Despite how much I suffered making my last isat au Aris sprite redraw, I decided to do it again and once again went through hell doing it. There’s like a billion mistakes in this (such as her having the wrong arm rip) but at the end of the day I’m still happy with how it turned out :]

[foreverxdaydreaming]

x

[rivilu]

ok you know. the Ellu in dav crossover au is very fun but i am a little bit enchanted by the concept of him AND Rynn at once. Best of both worlds in a sense.

[pup-pee]

i h8 nightwing ((2016)) sm that i would reread it all over again just 2 make a list & point out all the things i dont enjoy in it

[seilon]

pro: ran into a coworker at a bar last night who I don’t really talk to usually (he works upstairs, I work downstairs) and we talked and im pretty sure we were highkey flirting and he bought me a drink and the bar merch shirt i was interested in and thanks to the power of alcohol i guess i asked for his number and he gladly gave it to me and. yeah

con: i have the second worst hangover i have ever had and have been fighting for my fucking life just to eat saltines

[mad-hunts]

🎤 - An audio transcript from a recording

[ ARKHAM TAPES: patient 0158, barton mathis. FOR STAFF USE ONLY. ]

contains potentially triggering content such as child abuse, heavy violence, and overall disturbing content.

[ the only thing that can be heard in the beginning of the recording is the faint murmur of a man's voice — the volume is very low, and yet, you can just hear the southern twang in his voice as clear as day. the sound of the recording device scrapping against something loudly is what resounded through the audio next. then, it stopped, and the volume is much better as it seems whoever was using it fixed it. from there, a man who seemingly goes by the name DOCTOR BOWMAN begins speaking to someone across from him.

❝ alright. this is session number 3 with my patient, known as barton mathis, and the date is 3/12/2015; for records, this is doctor bowman. is it alright if i record our conversation? ❞ the southern twang the doctor had is more pronounced than ever now, and it made the slight hum that came from somewhere across from him in response to this seem a lot quieter than it actually was. the hum was resigned as if to say ' eh, whatever ' but there is a hint of aggression just barely present in it. a velvety, but still equally as deep voice answers him, ❝ mm, sure — why not? not that you really care about whether i want it be recorded, or not. ❞ doctor bowman paused at that. the only sound audible through the recording is a half-suppressed ' ahh ' that gives off a peculiar aura of sad understanding, ❝ i do care. we just have certain... rules set in place here, that everyone has to follow. it's just a policy has been in affect ever since doctor crane was fired from here. ❞

a quiet snort came from the other side of the room, and the sound of some sort of furniture crunching under the weight of barton adopting a new position atop it is audible. he sounded snide whenever he talked next, ❝ oh, he was a lot more than fired from here, wasn't he? it's okay. you can say that he became a patient here because he was experimenting on people. if only he wasn't after such a foolish goal. then, maybe he wouldn't have gotten caught, ❞ you can practically hear that the sneer that had no doubt formed on barton's face at that moment. doctor bowman said nothing at first, and then made an attempt at reining him in. ❝ okay, well, either way... we're not here to talk about doctor crane. we're here to talk about you. so, it seems from one of your previous psychiatrists, ❞ doctor bowman took another pause as the sound of him flipping through papers escaped the recording, ❝ that march is a particularly rough month for you. can you explain to me why that is? ❞

the room had suddenly become very quiet, to the point where all you could hear was the sound of both of their breathing. that is, until barton's voice made a return, but the velvetiness from it is completely gone. when he answered the doctor's question, barton's voice had hiked up a few octaves and he let out a muffled sigh as if something was obstructing his speech. maybe he was biting on one of his nails, or he was covering his face with his hand. i was hard to tell, ❝ mm, no. you cannot. next question, please. ❞ now it was doctor bowman's turn to adjust his position on what was probably a chair that he was sitting on. the sound of crinkling leather resounded through the speaker, and doctor bowman chose to try to pry an answer out of him. ❝ look, barton, if you ever hope to get better then you must realize that it's going to take some discom — ❞ doctor bowman paused mid-sentence as a gasp suddenly left his mouth and the sound of something crashing to the floor resounded through the room they were in. it resembled breaking glass, maybe from a lamp, or something similar.

doctor bowman's voice trembled at the beginning when he began talking once more, but it became steady after a few more seconds as he was trained to keep it neutral, ❝ barton, why... why do you have that? no, how did you get that? ahh. you know what, i'm going to call the orderlies, ❞ what ' it ' is is unclear. the sound of shuffling, then what was probably the weight of the doctor himself being forced back down onto the chair, came through the speaker. doctor bowman attempted to say something but was cut off, now letting out another gasp. barton's voice sounded a lot quieter now, but there is a certain coldness to it. a fury, if you will, ❝ you call them, and i will kill them, then you. you think you know why march is a terrible time for me because i can guarantee you that it was scrawled down in that folder. but you actually have no fucking idea. ❞

instead of asking him to elaborate more, doctor bowman tried to appeal to the more human side of him. he sucked in a breath before coughing. ❝ do — do not do this. you know what is going to happen if you do, don't you? if you just put the knife down right now, i promise you, i'll make it so that you aren't going to face as severe of repercussions from this. ❞ another cough, and just like that, barton's voice wrang throughout the room. it was deceptively sweet now, like he was relishing in the other's terror. a series of low-pitched laughs came from him. ❝ ooh my god, doctor, you should've been a comedian. no... i'll tell you what you want to know, since you are one persistent person. and so you'll have something to think about while you're gurgling on your own blood. this is the month in which my biological father was killed by the worst pig of them all: jim gordon. but it wasn't just that he was killed that makes it so rough for me. ❞

barton inhaled deeply, clearing his throat, ❝ it's that i wanted to kill him, too. i thought about grabbing a knife from the kitchen, sneaking into his bedroom, and killing him multiple times. but that's not even the worst part. ❞ another laugh came from barton but it wasn't sadistic, or even snide. it was choked-sounding. ❝ despite all of the foul things he did to me, i think a part of me still loves him. i mean there can't be any other reason why i would want to keep a part of him, ❞ there was a long pause then before he sniffled and the sound of crinkling leather once more crept through the recording.

❝ ahh, but you know, you were one of the better ones. it's a shame i have to kill you. ❞ a high-pitched scream soon blared throughout the room in which this was recorded, before the room fell entirely silent. the only sounds after this were footsteps, which were undoubtably barton's, and the recorder being turned off. ]

[stewyhosseini-bf]

one thing I will say that I kind of miss about the previous seasons is how the episodes used to feel a bit more self-contained, like their own little movies, which I'm kind of missing a bit in s4. lucy prebble at one point in the succession podcast described it as them having a sitcom-like feel to them, because each episode is built around one specific event; and while that's definitely still there in season 4, the way each episode does truly pick up almost exactly where the previous one left off time-wise, and the way that Logan's death and the children's grief is the red-thread that closely connects the episodes, kind of makes it feel like one long movie rather then 10 separate episodes. which is interesting and makes sense considering the focus of the season is supposed to be the children dealing with logan's death and consequent absence, and it's puts a slight spin on the formula they've used for 3 seasons and I think they've done that really well - so it isn't even a critique on my part, but I personally still really loved and kinda miss the way the episodes each felt more like their own thing, previously, ig

[chiara-klara-claire]

6.2.24 🎉🫥

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

You’d think that with all this bike riding and lifting children off the floor that I’d be even more hungry, but no; I have the appetite of a little tiny bird???? The fuck

I don’t like it

[unnecessarilygrandiose]

.

[arolesbianism]

I was looking at old photos of some of my nuggets yesterday from before I did my first day 1 reset (aka before I got a mod that lets you keep your agents during day 1 resets) and realized that I accidentally remade Eva wrong. Except! Beautiful world! It's actually a good thing because her current back hair was her dead sister's back hair so actually it was intentional from the start and I'm a genius forever <3333

[peachinspiration]

dunmeshi mithruncore (every day I can’t get up to make myself eat at all or get up to use the bathroom or fall asleep or actually do more to help myself unless im told to or someone physically Makes me do it or I finally manage to do so for the first time very very late in the day cuz I forced myself to out of fear)